


The Right Person

by SweetPollyOliver



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers, Power Rangers Samurai
Genre: Childhood Friends, Fade to Black, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Super Samauri finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 04:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10846260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: Skull told him he should come visit, so he did.





	The Right Person

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellipsesificate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellipsesificate/gifts).



Come visit, he'd said. So he did. 

Took kinda longer than he'd meant to, since he'd gotten caught up moving again for the umpteenth time, this time back home where he was hopefully to stay. 

But here he was. Chez Skullovitch. 

It was bizarrely un-Skullesque at first glance. Your standard McMansion with a backyard pool and hot tub and, oddly, a ballet studio that Bulk had wandered into by accident when he was looking for the bathroom the day he first arrived. It was almost like a cartoon rich person’s house.

The longer he stayed though, the more of Skull he saw in the place. He was there in the details; the gum stuck underneath the Steinway in the living room, the alphabetically organised CD collection with the Sex Pistols nestled somewhere between Satie and Shostakovich, the several years old pictures Spike had drawn in elementary school still stuck to the fridge with magnets shaped like sharks and cactuses and various other sharp things.

"He drew those when he was living with his mom full-time still," Skull said, slumped against his shoulder. "She'd send me things he drew for me and photos with her letters."

"So you guys never thought about… giving it a try? Being together, I mean?" Bulk asked. 

"Nah," Skull said, wincing as he took another sip of his incongruously cheap vodka. It was the same brand that they had drunk back when they were buying whatever would get them wasted the fastest with their fake IDs. "She's great and Spike's great, but we were just a couple of dumb kids who should have been paying better attention in health class. Not exactly true love."

"You ever think about meeting someone?" he asked. "Do millionaires have time to date or are you fed up of fine dining and violin serenades by noon?"

"I…" Skull trailed off. "I dunno. I’ve thought about it, I guess. But I don't really 'date' as such. Between work and being a dad, finding the time is hard. And I've gotten along this long without someone, so I guess it's not really a priority."

"That’s kind of sad," Bulk said. 

"Not really. I mean—I guess what people usually say is that they never met the right person? But that was never my problem." Bulk wondered briefly what he meant by that before Skull went on. "But you can be okay without that stuff. Besides, you never got married either. Unless you're holding out on me?"

Bulk let out a short laugh. "No, definitely not."

"See?" Skull said, resting his head against his shoulder. He wriggled a little to get comfortable. "The bachelor's life is where it's at."

Bulk reached across himself to pat Skull on the side of the head lightly and felt a push and the gentle crush of hair crispy with product against his palm in return as Skull leant into the touch. When he pulled his hand back, he felt his stomach twist slightly at the small sound of disappointment that came from somewhere under his chin. 

"I'm not going to be single forever, you know," he said.

"Oh yeah?" Skull said. He had started to transfer a leg over one of Bulk's knees and was now casually picking at a loose thread on his friend’s jacket as if it never even occurred to him not to.

"Yeah, I've got it all worked out," Bulk said to Skull's giggle, which was swiftly smothered against his shoulder. "I've just been playing a long game on reeling you in."

For a second, Skull seemed to stiffen almost imperceptibly and Bulk worried that the joke hadn’t gone over well, but then he felt him relax against him again. He must have just been adjusting himself to be more comfortable.

"Long game alright," Skull said casually, looking up a little and scratching his chin. 

"Well it had to look natural," Bulk said. "You remember the day we met?"

"That magical evening at the travelling carnival when I threw cotton candy up all over you?" 

"I'm sure you've often wondered why it is that I, a child known for fits of anger, didn't make a big deal out of it and, instead, helped you find your mom so she could look after you and take you home?"

"Honestly, Bulky, this very question has haunted my every waking moment since that day," Skull said, snorting a little with laughter in the middle of his sentence.

"What you don't know," Bulk said. "Is that earlier that day I visited the fortune teller's tent. She looked into her crystal ball."

Bulk paused to mime waving his hands around an imaginary ball while squinting dramatically.

"And she told me I was about to meet someone who would-"

"Throw up on you?" 

"-be stinking rich someday," Bulk finished.

Skull fell back on the couch laughing. 

"What can I say? I'm man enough to admit that I wouldn’t mind being kept," Bulk shrugged.

Skull scrambled back half upright so that he was propped up on his elbows. His leg was still hooked around Bulk's knee and it was bouncing restlessly, pulling Bulk's own legs a little apart every other second.

"Baby, you don't need to date me to be kept," he said, a little breathless still with laughter. "Just move into the spare room down the hall from me and I'll treat you like a princess, you big oaf. Mine will be a courtly and pure love" 

Bulk looked down and smiled. 

"Tempting," he said. "But you're okay. Angel Grove is where my heart is."

The smile on Skull's face turned a little wistful as his eyes flicked downward. 

"Yeah," he said. "Me too."

Something Skull had said earlier came back to Bulk with a jolt. 

"So," he said. His throat was suddenly a little dry and he cleared it awkwardly. He could feel his palms begin to sweat a little.

"Mmhmm?" Skull replied.

"Is the right person…" he trailed off. "Is the right person in Angel Grove?"

Confusion clouded Skulls face for a moment and then cleared as he remembered what Bulk was talking about.

"Oh," he said. "No, that's not it."

It was ridiculous to be disappointed, Bulk told himself. He was just working himself up to a sterner talking to when Skull started talking again.

"The right person's in my living room," he said softly. 

His eyes were big and dark and staring right straight into his, until he looked away suddenly.

The quiet wrapped around them like a fog, killing the previous atmosphere as neither of them said anything. Bulk pleaded with himself to say something, anything, but nothing would come. 

Skull silently retracted his leg to sit up straighter and Bulk found himself missing its warm weight against his thigh immediately. 

He looked across at Skull, who was looking straight down at the floor while his leg still bounced, quicker now than it had been before.

"I'm sorry," Skull said. "I shouldn't have-"

"No," Bulk said. "Sh- just shut up."

Skull almost flinched away from him at first as he reached out, before he realised what was going on, but then-

The first time their noses crashed together. 

The second time, Skull landed a kiss on his cheekbone while his chin pressed against Bulk's mouth. 

The third time Bulk reached out and held his face still, but he still couldn't lay one on him properly because Skull was smiling too hard to kiss back. Still though, his hand reached out and clung to the front of Bulk's shirt and, when they separated, he pressed their foreheads together. They stayed like that for a few seconds, quiet and chasing each other back and forth for kisses that were more lip than tongue. 

Skull shuffled forward and put himself into Bulk's lap, his knees straddling his thighs. The expensive tailoring in Skull's rich guy pants creaked ominously at the stress, but he seemed quite unaware of it, or at least didn’t give a damn if he was. 

"How does a guy in his thirties not know how to find a mouth with his mouth?" Bulk asked while he traced his thumb against Skull’s bottom lip.

"I kept waiting for you to help me practise," Skull said and took Bulk’s thumb between his teeth for a second, before leaning forward to bite his lip.

"Smart ass," Bulk muttered as best as he could without the full use of his bottom lip and hauled Skull closer again.

"Hey," Skull released him and pulled back. "Y'know this is like… this is a big deal right?"

On the cusp of coming back with a sarcastic remark about how he hadn’t realised because he casually made out with all his lifelong friends all the time, Bulk saw the anxious set of his friend's face. 

"Yeah, buddy, I know," he said softly. 

"And, like, I'm a package deal these days. I can't do a casual thing, especially not with someone who's already a part of Spike's life."

"Spike's like a son to me," Bulk said. "I love him and I love you."

It had slipped out before he could even think.

"I mean I love you as a friend."

Skull raised an eyebrow at him. 

"And I don't mean that I love you as a friend in some kind of a 'I'm not attracted to you' way, because I'm also that. Obviously. I just… have both of those things going on and I think that together they could maybe be greater than the sum of their parts. Some day."

"Oh, Bulky." Skull lifted his hands up to cup his face and then leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. 

"So is that… how’s that sound?" Bulk asked while staring at the hollow at the base of Skull's throat. He traced a line down the jugular with his index finger to it and then replaced the tip of his finger with his lips. 

"Sounds good to me," Skull sighed and Bulk felt the tips of his fingernails digging into his scalp. 

Skull never could remember to trim his goddamn nails and biting them was the one bad habit he never managed to pick up. Bulk didn't think he minded now. 

He maneuvered them so that they were horizontal on the couch. 

"Am I squashing you?" he asked Skull, who was now lying beneath him.

"Not enough," Skull replied impatiently and wound their legs together to drag him down flush against him. Skull sighed happily as Bulk's weight settled on top of him. "S'better."

"Weirdo," Bulk said. Skull grinned and grabbed him by the back of the head to pull him back to his lips. They made it on the first try that time.

They didn't say very much of anything for a while after that. 

*

"So how about you?" Bulk asked afterwards.

"Whaddya mean?" Skull mumbled into his bare shoulder. 

"I said that I loved you-"

"Yeah and then you gal palled me like two seconds later," Skull turned his face slightly so that his voice wasn't muffled. 

"Well?" Bulk poked him in the side, which made him squirm closer to him reflexively. "Do you love me?"

"You're alright," Skull said and patted his other shoulder absently. Bulk tickled his side again. 

"Whatever happened to all that 'the right person' talk?"

"Bulk," Skull turned his head again so that he was looking up at him. "Come on. You know I've always loved you. I didn't exactly play it very cool." 

For a moment all Bulk could think about was how long they'd known each other. 

"God," he said quietly.

"What?" Skull sounded a little nervous.

"I'm just thinking about all those times I didn't kiss you. I'm an idiot." 

Skull's laugh was like neither a bell nor a babbling brook. It was still kind of perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first time writing for this fandom and I'm a little nervous. I recently fell down the rabbit hole of rewatching my childhood first fandom on Netflix and I have a lot of feelings. Some of those feelings being that it's downright criminal that the number of Bullk/Skull fics on Ao3 is in the single digits. 
> 
> I'm normally very careful and meticulous about knowing all the details of a canon and would, ideally, have waited until I had gotten through the whole franchise before starting this, but I wanted to strike while the iron was hot and my preliminary poking around on the Power Rangers wiki heartened me with the multiple mentions of how flaky canon was about plot-holes. So hopefully the liberties I have taken are not too much and if I've made factual errors with regards canon that are jarring, I apologise.


End file.
